WordStar
In May 1978, Seymour Rubinstein stormed out of IMSAI Manufacturing Corporation. A disagreement with Bill Millard had just shattered his career as marketing director. Two weeks earlier, Rob Barnaby, a talented programmer, had already jumped ship. Rubinstein tracked him down and made him a simple proposal: create software together for these microcomputers starting to emerge from California garages.
June 1978 saw the birth of MicroPro International Corporation. The name reflected Rubinstein’s ambition: to develop “PROfessional” programs for “MICRO-computers”. The first fruits arrived as early as September with WordMaster and SuperSort. WordMaster built on the ideas of a text editor that Barnaby had developed at IMSAI, completely rewritten to run on CP/M. SuperSort drew inspiration from IBM 360 sorting utilities. These two programs brought in $10,700 in September 1978 alone, enough to face the future with confidence.
But resellers were demanding something else: a real word processor that handled printing directly. In early 1979, Barnaby embarked on a technical tour de force. In six months, he wrote over 137,000 lines of assembly code. IBM would have estimated this work at 42 man-years. The first version of WordStar was released in June 1979.
The software disrupted established practices. For the first time, the screen showed what would appear on paper. WordStar integrated context-sensitive help that adapted to the user’s actions, guiding their steps without cluttering the interface. Typists found familiar ground: all commands remained accessible from the keyboard, and page breaks displayed on screen—an unheard-of luxury.
Success exceeded all expectations. MicroPro climbed from $500,000 in 1979 to $1.8 million in 1980, then $5.2 million in 1981. The arrival of venture capitalist Fred Adler in 1981 transformed the company. A real sales force was put in place. Revenue jumped to nearly $25 million, with a loss of one million for the fiscal year. In 1982, revenues reached $45 million.
Rubinstein thought big and aimed for international markets. He established European headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, to take advantage of favorable tax treatment. Offices opened in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Japan. WordStar was released in 42 languages. The entire world discovered this futuristic word processor.
WordStar inherited the philosophy of text editors rather than that of typewriters. Text was now a continuous flow, no longer a succession of pages. Formatting commands were inserted directly into the document via special characters, a method borrowed straight from programming. This approach appealed to academics and writers who handled lengthy manuscripts.
In January 1984, Rubinstein collapsed from a heart attack as the company prepared for its initial public offering. The company’s lawyers persuaded him to sign documents that stripped him of control. H. Glen Haney took the reins and gradually sidelined the founder.
The new management accumulated missteps. WordStar 2000 was released in total incompatibility with the original version, sowing confusion among loyal users. Advertising for WordStar disappeared for three years. The network of 1,500 resellers was sacrificed in favor of a few large distributors. Sales plummeted from $72 million to $40 million.
WordPerfect arrived in 1980 by combining editing and formatting in a single display. Microsoft Word arrived in 1983 with the novel approach that each character is an independent entity with its own attributes. This method, initially slower, would come into its own with the emergence of graphical interfaces.
The 1990s sounded the death knell for WordStar. The transition to Windows went poorly. The software passed from hand to hand, acquired by companies specializing in the distribution of low-cost programs, and finally by The Learning Company. Corel obtained a license but preferred WordPerfect, which it had just acquired. WordStar survived thanks to a few groups of nostalgic users.
Yet the legacy remains immense. WordStar proved that a microcomputer could rival professional typewriters. Its interface innovations inspired an entire generation of software. It helped structure the software industry by creating user license agreements and developing international distribution.